Monday, January 13, 2014

Here are a few articles which I have stumbled across or which have been brought to my attention in the last few days, which I believe our readers will find interesting. The first, from Crisis Magazine, is by Brother Justin Hannegan, of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Mary and Saint Louis in Creve Coeur, Missouri. The article is entitled “Sacrificing Religious Life on the Altar of Egalitarianism,” and seeks to identify one of the major causes behind the collapse in vocations to the religious life in the United States and elsewhere.

Today’s vocations counselors will advise you to search your heart for
a desire to live religious life; and they will tell you that if you
don’t find this desire you are probably not called. For example, James
Martin, S.J., prominent Catholic author and editor of America, writes in an article
for the VISION Vocations Network, “God awakens our vocations primarily
through our desires.” He claims, “Henri Nouwen became a priest because
he desired it,” and “Thérèse of Lisieux entered the convent because she
desired it.” ...
Other examples abound. The prevailing opinion amongst those who talk
and write about discernment is that God calls men and women to religious
life by placing an innate desire for religious life in their hearts. If you have no such desire, it is unlikely that you are called.
This advice, although it looks harmless on the surface, ends up
thwarting religious vocations. Men and women who prayerfully examine
their desires almost never find a strong desire for religious life
lodged in the depths of their hearts. Religious life, in itself, is not
a desirable good. Religious life is a renunciation. It is a kind of
death. It involves turning one’s back on what is humanly good and
desirable. ... All forms of religious life, at their very
core, consist of three vows—poverty, chastity, and obedience—and each of
these vows is repulsive. The vow of poverty means giving up money and
property; the vow of chastity means giving up a spouse and children; and
the vow of obedience means giving up one’s own will. No one has an
innate desire to sever himself from property, family, and his own will. No one has an innate desire to uproot three of life’s greatest goods. Such a desire would be mere perversion.
Everyone, however, has an innate desire to get married. Religious
life is a renunciation, but marriage is a positive good. So, if we ask
people to decide between religious life and marriage on the basis of
their desires, they are going to choose marriage every time. And that’s
what’s happening. Vocations directors tell their advisees to
prayerfully search their desires in order to find their vocation. The
advisees search, and what do they find? An aversion to religious life
and a desire for marriage. So they choose marriage. Meanwhile,
religious orders shrink and die.
If we want to revitalize religious life, we need to rethink our
methodology. We need to stop telling people to look within their hearts
for an innate desire for religious life. They have no such desire. Instead of asking people whether they desire religious life, we should
ask them whether they desire salvation—whether they desire to become
saints. If sanctity is the goal, then religious life and all its
harrowing renunciations begin to make sense. Although religious life is
the hardest, most fearsome way to live, it is also the most spiritually
secure, most fruitful, and most meritorious.

We have forgotten that religion is not
about making the world a better place, but about going to a better
place. All the old chthonic mysteries of the cave have been replaced by
cheerful exhortations and enthusiasm for self-improvement and
prosperity. The ancient commerce with the other world and the soul
saving transactions with eternity have been relegated to the shelf with
the books on ancient civilizations, anthropology and psychology. We know
better now. We have outgrown that stuff. We are no longer in the dark
ages.

Or are we? The ancient symbolism of myth
and magic still thrives in the superhero movies, the fantasy novels and
the popular stories of the supernatural. Indeed the supernatural and
the superheroes are popular everywhere but in church—where ordinary
people once did extraordinary business with the supernatural and learned
to be those superheroes called saints.

Joseph Campbell left his boyhood
Catholic faith because of his disgust and dismay at the iconoclastic
reforms of his church after the Second Vatican Council. He understood
the language of the liturgy was not only Latin, but a complex
communication of symbols interplaying within the architecture, music,
language, costumes, rites, gestures, and rituals of worship.

In The Power of Myth he lamented
thus: “There’s been a reduction of ritual. Even in the Roman Catholic
Church, they’ve translated the Mass out of the ritual language and into a
language with domestic associations. The Latin of the Mass was a
language that threw you out of the field of domesticity. The altar was
turned around so that the priest’s back was to you, and with him you
addressed yourself outward. Now they’ve turned the altar around and it
looks like Julia Child giving a cooking demonstration—all homey and
cozy… They’ve forgotten that the function of ritual is to pitch you out,
not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time.”

This is why traditionalists in the
Catholic Church insist on certain forms in worship. Whether they adopt
the ancient Latin rite or not, they worship facing East and argue that
the priest is not “turning his back to the people” but focusing with the
people on the work of heaven which is the worship of God. They insist
that beautiful clerical vestments are important. Their beauty hints of
heaven. The priest does not wear brocade chasubles, lace albs, and
opulent copes because he likes dressing up, but because he understands
that the vestments provide a powerful contribution to the overall
symbolism of worship. Along with the ceremonial actions, the ancient
absurdity of incense, and the iconography of architecture and art, they
help pitch him and the worshippers out of the ordinary world and into
the other world.

..., Heightened, somewhat archaic and poetical
language was used deliberately in the new translation of the Catholic
Mass. The translators explain that a more lofty language is necessary to
lift the worship from the mundane to the marvelous. Likewise, the music
of the Mass is to be sacred. What this means precisely is the stuff of
arcane debates among sacred music scholars, liturgists, and priests.
While we may argue about what is included we know what should be
excluded: the musical styles that are purloined from the Broadway
musical, the rock concert, muzak, and the Grand Ole Opry.

Finally, the website of the Spectator in the U.K. offers some perspective on media manipulation of the public perception of Pope Francis. I especially like the subheadline of this piece: “Trendy commentators have fallen in love with a pope of their own invention”

That is how the Pope has come to be spun as a left-liberal idol.
Whenever he proves himself loyal to Catholic teaching — denouncing
abortion, for instance, or saying that same-sex marriage is an
‘anthropological regression’ — his liberal fan base turns a deaf ear.
Last month America’s oldest gay magazine, the Advocate, hailed
Francis as its person of the year because of the compassion he had
expressed towards homosexuals. It was hardly a revolution: Article 2358
of the Catholic church’s catechism calls for gay people to be treated
with ‘respect, compassion and sensitivity’. In simply restating Catholic
teaching, however, Francis was hailed as a hero. When a Maltese bishop
said the Pope had told him he was ‘shocked’ by the idea of gay adoption,
that barely made a splash. Time magazine, too, made Francis
person of the year, hailing him for his ‘rejection of Church dogma’ — as
if he had declared that from now on there would be two rather than
three Persons of the Holy Trinity. But for cockeyed lionisation of
Francis it would be hard to beat the editors of Esquire, who somehow managed to convince themselves that a figure who wears the same outfit every day was the best dressed man of 2013.